Historical observations of the large-scale flow and frontal structure of th
e Antarctic Circumpolar Current in the Scotia Sea region were combined with
the wind-induced surface Ekman transport to produce a composite Bow field.
This was used with a Lagrangian model to investigate transport of Antarcti
c krill. Particle displacements from known krill spawning areas that result
from surface Ekman drift, a composite large-scale now, and the combination
of the two were calculated Surface Ekman drift alone only transports parti
cles a few kilometres over the 150-day krill larval development time. The l
arge-scale composite flow moves particles several hundreds of kilometres ov
er the same time, suggesting this is the primary transport mechanism. An im
portant contribution of the surface Ekman drift on particles released along
the continental shelf break west of the Antarctic Peninsula is moving them
north-northeast into the high-speed core of the southern Antarctic Circump
olar Current Front, which then transports the particles to South Georgia in
about 140-160 days. Similar particle displacement calculations using surfa
ce now fields obtained from the Fine Resolution Antarctic Model do not show
overall transport from the Antarctic Peninsula to South Georgia due to the
inaccurate position of the southern Antarctic Circumpolar Current Front in
the simulated circulation fields. The particle transit times obtained with
the composite large-scale flow field are consistent with regional abundanc
es of larval krill developmental stages collected in the Scotia Sea. These
results strongly suggest that krill populations west of the Antarctic Penin
sula provide the source for the krill populations found around South Georgi
a.